


Boundless and Bare

by plingo_kat



Category: Assassin's Creed
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-02-20
Updated: 2012-02-20
Packaged: 2017-10-31 11:55:39
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 726
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/343775
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/plingo_kat/pseuds/plingo_kat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Assassin’s are born of the desert; of God, and honor, and death; of broken promises and fulfilled oaths; of blood, and a dedication to a higher cause.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Boundless and Bare

**Author's Note:**

> The idea for this came from a quote somewhere: "God was born in the desert." Also: I'm giving Altair an alternate backstory because I can! Or, you know, because his name is so interesting and it's just cooler if he doesn't know who his parents are, okay.

When Altair is a young boy, the Master gestures him close.

“Do you ever wonder where you come from, little eagle?”

“I am son of none,” says Altair, who has been beaten before for asking too many questions. “I accept this.”

“No,” says the Master, and Altair stands straighter, clasps his hands behind his back in preparation. “I speak not of you, but of the _Hashashiyyin_. The Brotherhood. Do you wonder?”

“No,” says Altair, because he has not yet learned to lie.

The Master looks at him for a long moment. Altair looks back. His hands are clenched tight enough for the skin to bleach white at the knuckles, the color of sand and bone.

“One day you will,” the Master says. “And I will tell you.”

Altair bows in acknowledgement. “Master.”

 

Twenty years later Altair thinks back on that day, and the afternoon a week after when Malik approached him with a thick-bound tome.

“Our order was founded three hundred years ago,” he says. Altair flicks him a glance, quick, like the flip of tail feathers in flight, before once again focusing on his whetstone and blade. Malik glowers. “In the desert to the east, in service of a mighty king.”

“I see,” says Altair, who now has an answer if the Master asks him again.

Malik narrows his eyes. “Is that all?” he asks. “‘I see?’”

Altair puts the blade down.

“Yes,” he says, standing, and prepares himself to fight.

 

The Master never does ask him again, nor does he ever tell Altair how the Brotherhood was created.

 

“Did you know,” Maria says, perched idly on a wall eating an apple, “that they say God was born in the desert?”

“I thought your God created all other things,” Altair says. He has no patience for religion, except for where it guides men’s actions and affects the Brotherhood. “Then he himself could not be created.”

“Hm.” Maria, in the end, is no more religious than he. She too believes in tangible things, that can be heard and seen and felt, that can bleed and break and die. “Perhaps there is a greater God.”

“Perhaps the first prophets were fever-mad,” Altair grumbles.

“It is the open space.” Maria gazes outwards, far away toward the horizon. “The endless sands and the pitiless sun. No wonder you are all touched.”

Altair does not reply. He is no judge of sanity.

 

“May Allah _kill_ you.” Malik’s voice is ragged with the intensity of his hate, dark eyes burning in a pale and set face. “May he take your house, and your health, and your children, should you have any--may he take your manhood--may your eyes rot and be pecked out by crows--”

Altair stands and takes it. He cannot bring Kadar back.

 

There is nothing else quite like the rush of the kill, knowing that your have outsmarted your opponent, that you hold their life in the palm of your hands. A good assassin does not glory in the death of his target, only gains satisfaction in serving the interests of the Brotherhood; no man, though, is immune to the feel of lifeblood flowing over their fingers. Of watching the light die out of somebody’s eyes. No man can deny the _power_.

The _Hashashiyyin_ are angels of death, some whisper.

Sometimes Altair believes it.

 

Two men stand in the desert.

“Serve me,” one says to the other. “Help me build a better world.”

“A better world,” the other says, and pledges with a fist over his heart.

Five years later, the first man is king. The second is leader of a group of warriors who act in the dark, silent and deadly.

One night the king wakes from his sleep with a dagger at his throat. He looks up into the face of his friend and most trusted advisor.

“Why do you do this?” he asks.

“You are corrupt,” the other man answers. “You deny the rightful requests of peasants and hoard wealth. You allow famine and drought to persist in your lands. You have broken your pledge.”

He cuts the king’s throat.

“But I have not broken mine, nor will I.”

 

Assassin’s are born of the desert; of God, and honor, and death; of broken promises and fulfilled oaths; of blood, and a dedication to a higher cause.

They are all mad. (Then again -- isn’t everyone?)

**Author's Note:**

> Title from "Ozymandius" - I know, I know, overdone. But what other famous lines of poetry immediately call to mind deserts? Exactly.
> 
> `My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:  
> Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!'  
> Nothing beside remains. Round the decay  
> Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,  
> The lone and level sands stretch far away".


End file.
